A bundle of joy

A bundle of joy arrived today. Three books which on brief inspection filled me with such anticipation that I can hardly bring myself to embark upon the journey proper, perhaps because I can already foresee and mourn the journey's end... But that anticipatory buzz of potential is magnificent while it lasts.

The three books are:

• Persepolis, the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. I want to see this at the cinema, where the simple. bold black and white images I am sure will outshine all but the best Hollywood glitz, but I always try to read the book first. If the film is seen first I always find it is difficult to go beyond that one interpretation of the book (perhaps due to the dominance of our visual sense). Even browsing the first couple of pages shows a delightful disdain for authority.
• Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord, perhaps the key Situationist text. Just the epigraph to the first section shows how relevant this work still is. "But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence...truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proprotion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. "
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. Zamyatin's belief in the absolute freedom of the human personality to create, to imagine, to love to make mistakes, and to change the world is itself inspirational. I think he and Guy may have got on well...
  

Agitpop

A school outing for the "breakfast club" on Wednesday - a sort of 3 men on the tube, the Artist, The Patron and me, the facilitator, or Fixer. (More on the breakfast club in a future post, but needless to say, we did not go without breakfast even though outside our normal environs. Although we had some vague plans, we ended up at Mike's Cafe - see The London Review of Breakfasts.) The purpose of our trip was to visit the london print studio (lps) to see the Agitpop (sic) exhibition - activist graphics, images, pop culture 1968-2008. A small but well-formed collection of images tracing the evolution of the political poster/graphic from Cuba in the '50s through the events of May '68 to punk and beyond. The Cuban material itself echoed back to the Soviet Agit-Prop posters of the '20s, which have been the subject of another recent exhibition. The surrealist influence of the situationists was also a common feature.

In the present Adbusters and the inspirational Brian Haw were referenced , but one was left with the feeling that if social networking is now to be internet based, web 2.0 has yet to take up the baton and be truly impactful in the manner of the movements driving and driven by the images seen in the lps exhibition. And the need to stand up for our rights becomes ever more (de)pressing, as evidenced by a recent documentary on More4, 'Taking Liberties", illustrating how our hard-won rights have been eroded over recent years. Property prices have also played their part in driving artists out, the works in the exhibition produced locally in Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove a stark reminder of how gentrification has changed this area so quickly since the '60s/'70s.

The exhibition closes at the end of May. There is what appears to be a similar exhibition on at the Hayward Gallery over the same period (natch) in their project space: May 68: Street Posters from the Paris Rebellion. This also seems worthy of investigation. although with Converse as a co-sponsor, even if the revolution will not be televised, it seems these days it can be commercialised.

The lps itself appears to be a superb organisation, a charity providing print making facilities to any who want to use them, at a modest cost. We we lucky enough to meet the co-founder John Phillips whilst viewing the exhibition, who gave us an informative tour of the studio. Thus the Artist was inspired to use the lps at some future date, the Patron disappeared to make an immediate purchase, and me, well, I'm the Fixer aren't I?

Normal service will be resumed at The Walpole next week.

Last chance to see the
"Breaking the rules"

exhibition at the British Library. Fantastic overview of the artistic outpouring in the first decades of the twentieth century via manifestos, books, magazines, photography, poetry and more... lots of -isms. Plus the ongoing impact in modern times. Made we wonder, where are they now? Go before its too late - ends 31st march.

Also my first trip to the new British Library - rather impressive in its own right.

You gotta start somewhere.... I've had this blog for 2-3 years now, but this is my first post. Always a late starter. So don't have too many expectations, don't hassle me, but hopefully things will improve.

As with most of these things, coalesce will contain musings on what's grabbing my attention at any point in time. The name of the blog, as I recall, was chosen in a renaissance spirit, to break down those artificial barriers we create for ourselves, between art and science etc., in the vain hope that all these supposedly conflicting elements will coalesce into a vibrant, life-affirming crystal.

Anyway, that's enough of the general blurb. I feel I am attempting to delay the inevitable (or the impossible).